Mayor Rob Ford cannot dismiss the latest allegations against him contained in police wiretaps released Wednesday by saying they’re a part of his past that he cannot change.

Bad enough he is reported to have offered $5,000 and a car to gangsters for a video of him smoking crack, that he later denied existed for six months.

What’s even more disturbing is how Ford’s dangerously reckless behaviour, if the contents of the wiretaps are true — including repeated drug taking, drug buying and hanging out with criminals — potentially exposed the mayor of North America’s fourth-largest city to blackmail.

Simply saying, again, that he’s “sorry” and that it will never happen again — if that’s what Ford now says after refusing to answer reporters’ questions Wednesday evening — isn’t good enough.

Because if these allegations are true, they not only provide further proof that Ford is unfit to be mayor, they raise serious questions about why Ford has not been charged with any criminal offences. Particularly since many of the people he associated with in this sordid affair have been.

None of the allegations against Ford contained in the wiretaps have been tested in court and Ford himself is never quoted directly on them. The wiretaps, however, contain numerous references to Ford and his activities from the people surrounding him, both friends and enemies.

His friend and part-time chauffeur, Alexander Lisi, is quoted at one point as saying to gang members that if they didn’t co-operate with Ford, he would get the police to crack down on the Dixon community in which they lived.

The wiretaps also quote gang members saying they weren’t afraid of Ford because they had numerous pictures of him in compromising situations, involving drug taking, aside from the crack video.

How Ford, in his capacity as the chief magistrate of Toronto, could repeatedly engage in such activities while mayor, exposing himself to the possibility of blackmail, is beyond comprehension.

How he could believe that denying the existence of a video showing him smoking crack — that he must have known existed — would solve the problem, is impossible to comprehend.

What it all suggests, at a minimum, is that Ford no longer deserves to be the mayor of Toronto. Not now. Not ever.